"How liberalism ended up the victim of its heralded success in the Cold War is the story this book aims to tell." The prevailing belief that the collapse of communism would usher in a world of democratic principles proved to be incorrect. The lack of an apparent alternative to free market capitalism led to the anti-western ethos dominating in the post-communist societies today. The newly freed countries of Europe were expected to imitate the west and watch as the west opined on how well they were doing. They joined the EU and were told what laws to enact in a sort of supervised democracy. The Central Europeans felt that their identity was being threatened. "The origins of today's anti-liberal revolt lie in three parallel, interconnected, and resentment-fueled reactions to the presumptively canonical status of Western political models after 1989." The first is the Polish-Hungarian frustration with a new system that they viewed as just as 'imposed' as the old Soviet system was. Next, offended by the west's hypocrisy, Russia attempted to mirror it by interfering in the west's politics, just as the west did in Russia's in the 1990's. And lastly in America, the fear of being supplanted and dispossessed by immigrants and the Chinese has driven Trump's message of US victimization.
"The post-1989 transition to normality aimed at making possible in the east the kinds of lives taken for granted in the West." For the Central European countries freed from communism, becoming like the west was the universal consensus after 1989. The reform by imitation projects, however, did not envision the local impediments to democracy and liberalism. The most significant problem that stemmed from 1989 was that the young and well-educated could now leave. And they did. Some countries in the east have lost a quarter of their population. Why reform your hidebound country when you can freely move to a better one? The combination of emigration, an aging population and low birth rates has befallen the post-communist east. Thus, in 2015, the countries of Central Europe refused to follow Germany's example and admit hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Although there are virtually no refugees, Muslims or Africans in Central Europe, the Visegrad Countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) have barred their doors to make sure they never arrive. Indeed, the Poles and Hungarians point out that they stopped the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 and Western Europe needs to come around to their way of thinking. It is incredibly naive to think you can absorb and acculturate everyone.
Once again, I am unable to finish this book and post this brief synopsis for one point and one point only. I had no idea that the former communist countries suffered such massive outflows of people. I find that fact quite compelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment